We will explore children’s literature as it evolved over the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The course examines the relationship between ideologies of childhood and, in turn, literature for children. Students will learn how to evaluate and interpret a children’s text and its accompanying illustrations. Attention will be given to the socio-political context of each work, the rise of gender-specific fiction, and the ways children’s literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have responded to race, religion, and gender. Students will help to shape the curriculum by proposing a children’s book to be added to the syllabus, voting on these selections, and planning and leading class discussion for our final classes. 

Our class exhibition designed on COVE focuses on the history of children’s literature through canonical texts (list below). Students will select one work from a list of chronologically arranged books, choosing 4-5 images for a virtual display case to illuminate the chosen book’s importance to the history of children’s literature. Students will write an introduction, headers, and captions for their case, complete a reflection on their experiences mounting an online exhibition on COVE, and contribute to an assessment of the exhibit.

Classic Children’s Books Up Until 1950

Aesop, Aesop’s Fables (ca. 600 BC)

John Amos Comenius, Orbus Pictus (1658)

James Janeway, A Token for Children:  Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives,

and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children (1672)

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

Charles Perrault, Tales of Mother Goose (1729)

Oliver Goldsmith, Little Goody Two Shoes (1765)

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1823, English version)

Heinrich Hoffman, Slovenly Peter (1848, English version)

Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies (1863)

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868, 1869)

Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (1877)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883)

Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book (1894)

Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (1904)

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)

A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)